Water texture and shader??

[TylerH]

I understand. I wasn't suggesting using an infinite plane. I was just stating that it would be cool if we could apply the default water shader to a multiple number of planes/cubes/etc in the level to do things like lakes, ponds, puddles, etc.

[Rick]

That's actually the route I'm going to mess around with this weekend. Although when I use the default water for smallerr areas of water I'm not a fan of how it looks, so I might have a slight variation of it.

[Pixel Perfect]

I did just this back in the 2.1 days. I used the existing water shader and applied it to my own planes (non infinite). I had to adjust some of the settings in the shader I seem to recollect to get the scaling right and I did have some z order issues with the textures where the plane met the terrain; but it worked.

[Rick]

Yeah I could copy how it's done, but it doesn't look good for smaller bodies of water like pools, small ponds, or even water in a sink. I'll need to tweak things some to get the right look.

[Pixel Perfect]

Yeah, ideally it could do with a series of switchable options for the type and look of the water. That would make it pretty universal.

 

Wouldn't it be nice to have flowing water as well though, that flowed at right angles to the normals of the enclosing terrain so it would look like it flowed round corners etc. I have no idea how we'd even start to do that!

[Rick]

That would be nice. The only 2 ways I can think of is physics or faking it. The water plane could fake it. Rotate the plane anyway you want and apply a scrolling texture to it of water running down. I was poking around WoW's files the other day and that's how they do it. They actually modeled the entire water flow for a small rivers and waterfalls on a plan with scrolling textures. They actually made 2 planes. The bottom plane didn't have scrolling textures, but the top plane did.

[Pixel Perfect]

Fluid physics would be nice but we don't have that. Maybe a series of particle emitters could be used and the direction modulated by the angle of the containing terrain. Again, this is where particle attractors and deflectors would be great! Even if this was just used as you suggest to provide an upper layer over a base water textured plane. If you were wanting to modulate a scrolling texture such that it reflected the turns of the river I feel the use of Shaders looming into view as the obvious solution. Damn ... shaders again lol